Jude Williams: From Now On We’re StarDust
From Now On We're StarDust by Centenary sophomore Jude Williams explores the connection between life and stars through mixed media art and poetry. It emphasizes the significance of contemporary art and the ability to create meaningful pieces from various sources. Ultimately, it highlights the idea that we all have the power to shape our own meaning.
How did your art journey start?
I’ve always loved art since I was a child; but as one of my poems in the show, “Persia” explains, I first started creating art with my family on our dining room table. My dad and grandma introduced painting with us on rainy days, buying new supplies to try together that we stored in our art chest.
To this day he still has our paintings on the kitchen walls. On a side note, my dad would also draw anything I told him to, like on the paper table cloths at Macaroni Grill. He has always been supportive of my work and creativity.
How did you create the concept for From Now on We’re StarDust?
I was consuming a lot of media that talked about stardust, and I got the idea from the work I was making in my pop poetics class and the final sculpture project in my spring term sculpture class. This sculpture turned into Clementine’s Mobile which I knew during its creation would be a part of my show.
I wanted to capture the different stages of a star death, and I planned it in my black night poetry book. I could talk more about it, but it was very in depth; I planned the meaning for weeks.
I had lost my friend Wes in April, and a day before his funeral the So Much For Stardust album by Fall Out Boy came out. Wes and I really loved singing their songs together, and it was like the album said goodbye for me. Though it was a while before I could listen to it again.
Going back to stardust hit big for me because Wes was cremated. I wrote my frustration and grief with reality in my poppy poetry book. I wasn’t ready to let go, it felt like the world killed him twice without leaving a trace. But I made peace with it through poetry, letting him go back to stardust.
What sources or influences did you draw inspiration from to develop this particular exhibition?
Aside from the Stardust album, I really resonated with Fall Out Boy’s older single “From Now On We Are Enemies.” I did an analysis of this song in relation to a poetry book by Hanif Willis Abdurraqib. When dissecting this song, it was based on the life of Mozart and his rise to fame at such a young age, as well as his rivalry with Antonio Salieri. I think it captures the art of living in the contemporary, Fall Out Boy uses the art and lives of these classic masters in their lyrics to create and parallel topics of fame and what it means to be worthy of it. I think that’s what I’m trying to do with StarDust, pieces made in the contemporary world are just as worthy if we make them so.
Could you explain your use of different media in the art and the way they all tie in together?
I used mostly found materials I already owned or made myself. The canvases were made in 2018 by my father and I for an art show he wanted badly for me to have. We got plywood and cut and sanded them, and he even helped me engineer the hook design on the back with wire and drill holes.
For the small stars, I used individual CDs I got from goodwill, cutting them up and taking them on outings with friends. I wanted this whole exhibit to be a shared experience, my friends helped me make the stars in many different ways. Even Clementine’s Mobile - my mom helped me make that in three days for the original assignment.
I read all the poems several times to my closest friends and even asked for their initials on the works they say through with me. My father and friend Ronnie helped me make the pulling mechanics and internal structure for the mobile late one summer night.
The significance is that these words and discs and sparkles were all something before me and my art, and they will always be what they were, but now they are also a part of me.
When stars die, pieces of that dead star go on to form the new ones. And that is the reason I chose the materials I did.
What challenges did you face creating this exhibition and how did you overcome them?
The overwhelming grief and loss I felt at the beginning of this exhibition held me in the darkness. I couldn’t see myself or where I fit into anything.
Before I had lost Wes, I wrote the last poem of the exhibit, “All those stars in the black night sky I see are dead.” That was about the death of my grandmother in 2014, coincidentally made for an assignment in Dr. Martin’s Pop Poetics course. And it was such a heavy poem that when I heard of Wes’s passing I couldn’t touch it for a month.
I think the grace Dr. Martin gave me in my time of mourning encouraged me to continue writing. She took the time to sit with me and plan the steps of writing final essays at a time when all I wanted to do was cry. She never let me go, and she cared for my work with such dignity and compassion.
I think the most difficult part of this exhibition was why I made it at all, to remember those that have made me and seen me. They live in my contemporary art and are worth remembering. Maybe someday this world will remember me as fondly when I go back to stardust.
From Now on We’re StarDust is on display at the Meadows Museum from August 28 - September 22, 2023.